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The author, Robert Gessner, identifies himself as an American Jew. (p. 3). His travels took him to Europe (including Nazi Germany soon after Hitler came to power). His accounts exhibit a pronounced lachrymose mindset, and he consistently uses the “Jews are scapegoats” trope. There is one important exception to this tendency, as elaborated next:
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Classically, the elevation of the Holocaust over the genocides of all other people has been justified (rationalized) through the argument that all Jews were targeted for extermination, and never before in history has a state tried to exterminate an entire group using all the resources at its disposal. (Fogu et al. p. 13).
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This book highlights the cases involving Swiss Bank and German companies. It includes a testimony by Judge Edward R. Korman. However, the most interesting information is of an indirect nature, and that is the focus of my review.

Although author Stuart E. Eizenstat does not mention Norman Finkelstein by name, he would have us believe that there is no such thing as the Holocaust Industry because, according to him, very little of the Holocaust reparations monies went to the lawyers. He asserts that many lawyers worked pro bono in the Swiss bank case in which he was actively involved, while other lawyers got only about 1% of the settlements. He compares this with victorious mass-injury cases, in which the attorney gets 15%-30% (or more) of the settlement. [p. 345].
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The Nazi German extermination of 5-6 million Jews is fact. Its self-evident special status is not. That is what I emphasize in my review.

ONLY THE JEWS ARE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED

The title of this book is a bit misleading. It is less about a “Nazi past” as it is a one-sided German intellectuals’ rumination over past German crimes against Jews—as if the Holocaust was the ONLY crime that Germans ever committed. In fact, this work is scrupulously sanitized of any mention of the genocidal German crimes against Poles. Check the index: “Poles” and “Poland” do not appear even once!
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This book can be useful for those readers interested in a compendium of Polish-Jewish interactions in modern Poland. Most of it, however, is standard fare (as elaborated in the latter part of my review). The most distinctive part of the book is as follows:

My review is limited to Tomasz Frydel and his chapter: “The ‘Hunt for the Jews’ as a Social Process, 1942-1945”. Frydel’s work is refreshingly objective as it goes deeply into the controversial—and sometimes emotional—topic of Polish-Jewish relations under the Nazi-German occupation during WWII. Frydel builds upon the earlier works of historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (e. g., BETWEEN NAZIS AND SOVIETS).
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Author Vasily Grossman was a Soviet Jew, and this book is one of the first, if not the first, account of Treblinka. His refreshingly-candid treatment provides a lasting testimony not only to the horrors of Treblinka, but perhaps—even more so—a diagnosis on how Holocaust memory had since been manipulated.
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